The Little Prince
by Conigliomannaro
Summary: Things don't work well at first. Axel is wild, untamed, and Roxas doesn't know how to handle him. Until he's given a book, and things slip out of control: the key to everything is in the book, it's always been in the book. He never really stood a chance.


Hello everyone. This is a story I wrote for the birthday of a friend around December of last year and posted on Lj. There is some minor racial marginalization in this, as well as a short sex scene, but it's not graphic so I believe it can stay here. Having read The Little Prince does help a great deal in the following of this story, but I guess it's not mandatory. I hope you enjoy, leave me a few lines if you wish.

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><p>Roxas is sitting in the shadow cast by the big oak beside the river the first time he sees the little guy. Roxas is young, probably only four or five, and he's playing with the sand on the shore, alone; his brother Cloud's lying on a rock nearby with his friends, silently pretending to be dead while Tifa chats with Aerith and Zack tries to poke him into playing some kind of game. Roxas is the only kid there: he's ten years younger than his brother, who in turn is the younger of his circle of friends, so Roxas is growing annoyed with playing alone, he's getting bored. He's seen a flash of red on the other side of the river, a dirty kid about ten years old spying carefully on them from the branches of a tree, but he doesn't know him and he's shy. If the kid wants to play, he'll come over, right?<p>

He totters his way to Zack, tugs at the strings of his swimming trunks with a childlike scowl on his face. "'Et big bro sleep." he mutters, "I'll play wif you."

In his defense, Zack doesn't really put up much resistance. He gives up on Cloud and takes Roxas to the riverbank, plays with him smiling, doesn't really seem like he's just putting up with him. Roxas likes Zack. He's always patient and smiles all the time, and whenever Cloud is sad, all Roxas has to do to make it better is to go searching for Zack. Zack always makes everything better.

Roxas is soon so absorbed in his play with Zack that he forgets the red headed stranger in the tree. He's reminded when there's a loud cracking sound and a choked childlike scream, and the stranger crashes to the ground. The girls are on their feet in a second, Aerith especially searching with worried blue eyes along the riverbank until she sees that Roxas and Zack are fine. They evidently hadn't noticed the red headed stranger before, and it's only when Roxas tells them where the kid fell that Aerith and Tifa wade across the river to seek the hurting child. They find a skinny, dirty, red headed kid nursing a large cut in his leg with – surprisingly – the correct herb, and who hisses and cowers when approached. The green eyed kid disappears when they try to get closer, and all the girls can do is head back. Cloud's taken Roxas up in his arms, not enthralled with the idea of him being free to roam around with gypsies in the area, and they head home.

That is the first time Roxas personally sees a gypsy. He's heard of them since the day he was born – gypsies are thieves, and they steal babies from their mothers, he's been said – but he never saw one before. He thought they were different. He wouldn't have known that the kid was a gypsy, if Cloud hadn't told him. Those green eyes – young like his own, longing, like the little guy desperately wanted to be invited to play with them – didn't look much different from his own, after all. Once washed up and dressed in clean clothes, the little gypsy would pass as a neighbor or a friend to most people he knew. And when he tells Zack this on their way back to town, the smile that Cloud's best friend gives him is blinding and makes him feel proud and accomplished. He said something good, if Zack looked at him like that. He must have said something beautiful.

"Kids are kids." Zack answers cheerfully, taking him up in his arms to explain him better. Roxas has a feeling he remembers that first meeting with the redhead so well mostly because that day he learned a lot of things; things about differences, about tolerance. Cloud listens carefully but never interrupts and Roxas is confused. Mom said he mustn't trust gypsies and mom is always right. But Zack is always right too, and how could two people who are always right say two completely opposite things?

It's Cloud who solves the mystery. Zack is right, but there are some people that are bad, that are evil, and since he can't know who these people are, being cautious and distrustful like mom said is more prudent. For as much as it makes sense, Roxas still feels a bit bad for the stranger kid with those green eyes that wanted to play with him so bad, and he tells Cloud.

The next day, Cloud takes Roxas to the river again, but the red headed gypsy doesn't come. Neither does he the day after, or the day after that. Roxas sees the redhead in town about a week later, with a taller dude that looks a lot like him. They're heading for the doctor's office beyond the old well, and Roxas follows stealthily; even though the older redhead looks at him a couple times, he doesn't seem to care much for him.  
>The kid, the green eyed little gypsy, is limping, and his right leg is swollen and a little blackish, all a big bruise bandaged in dirty cotton poking out of shorts that are too big for him. Tifa did say the kid had cut himself badly, and if he had bandaged his leg without cleaning it first – and it did look like it – it isn't surprising that his leg had swelled.<p>

He hears the kid screaming after a while. He screams in another language, full of rasping consonants and lazily pronounced vowels, and for a moment Roxas fears that the doctor is being mean to the kid because he's a gypsy. Doctor Vexen is definitely not a nice person, but Aerith is his nurse, and she _is_. Roxas is rather positive she would step in to protect the kid, so he's soon pacified on that subject. There's another voice screaming now, older, with the same style of gritting consonants and short vowels, and it must be the kid's older brother. He sounds angry, like he doesn't want them to do something, but in a short time Aerith has managed to send the boy out of the office, asking him to wait. Roxas stares at the boy through distrustful eyes, scoots away a bit, just in case the gypsy decides to grab him and run; but the guy doesn't seem interested in kidnapping him, and maybe mom's wrong, maybe gypsies don't steal kids and babies.

"Kandi?" the boy snarls after a while, and Roxas almost startles out of his skin, cowering in reflex when the redhead holds his hand out towards him. There's a lollipop in his hand, held out, and it's pink so Roxas thinks it's strawberry and he really likes strawberry, but should he be taking it? There's something written on the wrapper, but Roxas can't read and the letters are all wrong, the N is backwards, for example, and they're clearly foreign, but pretty. And pretty things cannot be poisonous, right? "Kandi. Tak it." the stranger insists in terrible English. Roxas thinks about it only a second – he really, really likes strawberry candies – and yanks the lollipop out of the guy's hands before cowering away again. That's what mom would want him to do, right? Cowering and escaping. He's vaguely aware he shouldn't be accepting candy from strangers, but its strawberry candy and mom isn't cool enough for him to give up strawberry candy. He shoves the foreign lollipop in his mouth and looks up curiously at the boy who's staring with amusement at him from the doctor's threshold. He doesn't look evil. He's actually smiling, and Roxas just keeps staring at the pretty, long red hair, the streaks of red over his cheekbones, the thin, pale lips before he decides he likes him.

"Reno." the boy says, and Roxas isn't sure why the guy's saying so. They're not in Reno, they're a lot farther south, and he's mispronouncing it anyway. His angry language full of consonants spreads into his English, and he pronounces way too much 'R' and the 'C' in 'Reno' and 'Candy', but Roxas can understand anyway. But he has no idea why the dude's talking about Reno, now. "Reno. You?"

Roxas would answer, but a second later there's a blur of red running out the door, and the stranger gives a yell in his stern, incomprehensible language before running after his heavily limping little brother as Aerith and Vexen emerge from the office. The doctor hisses and yells, cursing thieves and hangers-on, and disappears inside again. Aerith sighs, watching the two disappear somewhere past the last turn of the street. Then, she looks up at him. "Roxas!" she greets with that kind smile of hers. "Hey there. What were you doing here?"

"I was spying on the gypsies." Roxas answers, emerging from behind the car he was peeking from just moments before. "The older one gave me candy. Did he want to steal me?"

Aerith gives a displeased sigh and shakes her head. "No, Roxas. The kid had a bad infection in his leg, was malnourished and probably hungry. He stole some money and ran away without paying because he wanted to eat, I guess. But I don't think they wanted to steal you."

"Malnourished? Even kids can be malnourished?" Roxas asks. It's a strange concept. Mom always says he and Sora need to be fed first, because they need to grow up, because kids are weaker and fragile and must be protected and loved. How is it possible for the red headed kid to be malnourished? His parents should be ashamed of themselves.

"Yeah, Roxas. Some kids are unlucky and don't have a house or money for food," Aerith answers a bit sadly.

Roxas still isn't convinced. "But kids need to grow up." he insists. "All kids must eat." Never before has Roxas been forced to acknowledge poverty and other bad things in life. The village he lives in is small, but it's prosperous, all simple people working the countryside, big cultivated fields, farms, sleek cattle munching lazily at the edges of white, dusty dirt roads. No poor people, no beggars, and certainly no thieves or gypsies. No poverty. It's a strangely disturbing discovery, especially because it involves children like him, children with big green eyes aching to play on the shore of the river.

Aerith and Tifa seem to take the situation very seriously, almost personally; Roxas sees them ask around, probe, search until they manage to locate the two brothers living in an old abandoned house in the woods, and find them a place to stay in the village's church, under the priest's protection. At first the two brother don't want to, they hiss and cower like wild animals, they run away, probably convinced they're gonna be arrested or something; it takes a while for Aerith and Tifa to overcome their distrust, but eventually they give in and move into the town, in an old, dusty couple rooms behind the church. Now the redheads have a house and thanks to the priest they have enough to eat, but nobody in the village wants to have anything to do with them. The smaller kids avoid the younger one, and the older redhead is often busy trying to get a job, but to no result. They speak very little English, and have that generally arrogant, wild and lazy attitude that tends to drive everybody away.

Time passes, but the two strangers continue to stand out like sore thumbs in the village, isolated and avoided like the plague; it's the village's fault, maybe, but even so, they must take their share of the blame. If they made a greater effort to learn to speak English and stopped stealing whatever they could, maybe it'd be easier for them to fit in.

It's not that Roxas doesn't want to play with the younger kid. He would like to, but the kid always watches him from far away, hidden behind something, and dashes closer only to steal some toy or play some nasty, annoying trick on them, like kicking their sand castles apart or pushing the girls into the river before they had time to take their beach robes off. Roxas has no idea why the kid seems to be trying so desperately to be shunned, but he has a feeling it's like all the tricks Hayner plays on Olette to catch her attention. The problem is, Olette hates Hayner and his friends all hate the small gypsy, and say nasty, evil things about him.

But Roxas isn't convinced.

The first time he tries to talk to the kid is a disaster. He walks closer, offers him his ice cream, and recognizes too late the green flash of malice in those eyes, right before the kid yanks the ice cream from his hands and shoves him to the ground, calling him 'goldilocks' despite him being a boy. Or maybe, exactly for that reason. Roxas is beginning to grow annoyed with this, because hey, he only wanted to be nice, so why did the kid have to be such a meanie? He tries another couple times but it only gets worse, up to the point in which Roxas and the stranger – Axel is his name – become full blown enemies.

Axel's formed a small group of older kids, two strays that stick to him and call him 'boss', and spends the majority of his free time teasing Roxas and yelling injurious names at him and his friends, playing nasty tricks; they steal the girls' dolls and hang them to the trees, or shove their toys into the river to spite them and make them cry. And every time they play some of these nasty acts on Roxas and his friends, Axel's eyes seem to look for Roxas' anger, for his beet red cheeks, for his screaming and crying. And they shine with accomplishment when he catches Roxas crying and stomping his feet. "Goldilocks," he teases, "Goldilocks, you cry like little girl you are."  
>Stupid Axel and his stupid Russian accent.<p>

Time passes, years pass, and Roxas and Axel fight whenever they cross paths. It doesn't matter how detached Roxas tries to seem, Axel always manages to grate on his nerves and get under his skin. Roxas doesn't know how the priest can live with that annoying little thug always hanging around his house, because the priest is a nice person and Axel is probably the devil incarnated; he tried asking the priest once, but all the old man had done had been scolding him and sending him on his way saying 'He who is without sin, cast the first stone'.

Roxas is around ten, eleven years old when Axel finally seems to have outgrown his antipathy for him. Axel's sixteen now, dropped out of school and works in the fields to make some money: he has much less time than before to sneak around and try to make Roxas' life miserable. They still look at each other, Roxas hatefully and Axel smirking arrogantly, but Axel probably feels he's too old to pick on an elementary schooler.  
>Roxas' opinion of Axel hasn't changed, but life is a bit easier, now.<p>

One day of Roxas' eleventh spring, things change. Mom's sent him to take the money for granpa's funeral to the priest, but the old man is not in the church; Roxas heads for the river, for the priest uses to sit there and read from time to time, and he's not surprised to find him there. What surprises him is that Axel's with him under the big oak tree. The old priest is reading a book out loud, the young gypsy lying on his elbows right in front of him. Chin leaned on the palms of his hands and legs raised up swishing back and forth absently while his eyes are trained as if entranced on the old man's face, Axel's drinking every word. Roxas has never seen the boy like this; he looks almost normal. Not nasty, not mean. He looks like a kid. He looks like all kids look when they listen to their fathers telling stories about the war or fairy tales. He doesn't even look sixteen. He doesn't look much older than Roxas himself, actually.

And it hits him right then and there. Axel doesn't have a father. Axel has nobody. Reno has found a job and he's out from morning to evening, and maybe Axel just feels alone and at the same time he's afraid that people will push him away; so he pushes them away first and pretends it was his idea, thinking it will sting less that way. Roxas knows what he's talking about, because Cloud's been doing that same exact thing ever since dad died, and finally he understands what the priest meant when he told him to stop being judgmental. But this means that Axel is not evil, he's just angry and lonely. And Roxas can't hate someone who is angry and lonely, can he?

When he tells Zack and Cloud what he has realized, his brother and his best friend gape at him like he just grew another head. "Did you think of that all by yourself?" Zack stammers and when Roxas shrugs and blinks, nodding, a bit confused, Zack gives him another one of those big, blinding smiles of his. "God Roxas, you're so mature for your age."

Roxas isn't sure exactly what he has done, but he guesses it was something good again. He will realize later, many years later, that his father figure has always been Zack, even if he'll be growing up really similar to Cloud. And Axel? Who was his father figure? Did he have one at all?

Through the years, Axel has grown up to be a fairly normal person. He's found a job in Tifa's cafeteria, learned to behave, learned to speak English better. He and Roxas begin talking sometimes, and as the years pass Roxas is able to crack Axel's façade and get him to open up to him, at least a bit. Ever since he realized why Axel was so guarded, Roxas' patience towards him has been everlasting. In the long run, it ends up paying off. Axel teaches Roxas how to ride the horses of the breeding farm where Reno works, Roxas teaches Axel how to swim. They learn together how to ride bikes – thanks to Cloud – and Roxas has his first smoke in Axel's house, Reno half passed out sprawled over the couch and Axel laughing at Roxas' coughing fit. Aside from Roxas, nobody was ever so persistent in trying to get to know Axel better, and Axel begins showing a rather childlike gratitude for this. He's not ashamed to be the only twenty year old in town to call a sixteen years old kid 'best friend', and Roxas is both endeared and slightly disturbed by that.

Things get slightly ugly one July day of Roxas' sixteenth year. Roxas' left his backpack at Axel's place, and Axel doesn't know Roxas never told his mother he's been hanging out with him. He heads for Roxas' house on his way to work, rings his doorbell and smiles as he tells the woman who answered the door that Roxas left his books at his place. The woman comments coldly that she wasn't even aware that Roxas had been spending time at his place and that he's been _too nice to come by and give the backpack back_; it's clear that she doesn't want him in her house. She lets Axel in as a matter of etiquette, tells him Roxas is in the shower, and when Axel shrugs and tells her he'll wait, she stiffens disapprovingly. The whole deal is terribly awkward; she doesn't let him out of her sight for a moment, and when Axel's face closes up in a defensive, angry grimace, she politely asks him to leave.

Axel leaves furious, more upset than he has ever been before, because he's been humiliated but he doesn't know what humiliation means, because nobody ever taught him to label such things. He only knows he's angry, and understands that the woman has disrespected him somehow, but can't pinpoint exactly _how, _because no bad words have been said, after all.

All he can do is grow angry at Roxas for being ashamed of him and not telling his mom. His attitude towards his best friend changes again, shifts, and Roxas has no idea what's happening, but now one day Axel's back to avoiding him and calling him names, the next he buys him ice cream and watches him with that longing, slightly needy stare of his, the stare that's just like the first time they met. Dealing with Axel has become terribly, terribly difficult and frustrating.

Their friendship probably wouldn't have survived Roxas' seventeenth year if it wasn't for Xion. She tends to keep peace between them, works something like a lightning rod, and when she dies it's a devastating blow for both of them. It brings them close, closer, much, much closer than they have ever been, even before that day in July. Roxas, fresh from his eighteenth birthday, together with Hayner, Sora, Pence and Riku, carrying her light beige coffin at the head of the line to the cemetery; Axel sobbing desperately in a corner, far from the village's eyes. He had been there when she faded, had seen her big blue eyes widening, her breath breaking in that choked cry of pain, and she had been in his arms when she gasped out her last breath. Poor little Xion had always had a weak heart, it was bound to end like this since the very beginning.

But Axel, he can't help but thinking that maybe, maybe if they hadn't played soccer that day, she would still be alive. And there's no comforting him, no holding him close: for all Roxas tries, Axel is inconsolable all through the long day and into the night that follows. Because together with Roxas, the priest and Reno, Xion was family. And now she's no more, and he'll never see the blue of her eyes again.  
>Axel finally falls asleep in the morning, curled in an undignified hurting ball in Roxas' lap. This time, Roxas' mother doesn't have the courage to kick him out. She wraps him and her son in a blanket and goes to work.<p>

When Roxas wakes up Axel's gone, and so are his wallet and his cigarettes.

Fucking thief.

Roxas is aware it's not in Axel's character to be quiet and predictable. He knows Axel loves him, in some way, he knows Axel would probably give a leg for him, but after Xion's death his restlessness grows worse. He quits his job, begins just hanging around. He can't seem to keep a job more than two months, picks up _all _of Reno's bad habits, steals things, disappears for days. Axel's an adult, so Roxas knows he can't dissuade him, but his friend seems to be growing distant, and it's in the midst of this period that the priest gives him a strange gift. It's a small book, and the kid on the cover looks a lot like he himself would look if he was wearing a long scarf.

_The Little Prince_.

Roxas is an avid reader, so he shrugs and accepts the gift. One late summer afternoon Roxas goes to the big oak tree nearby the river, sits with his back to its trunk with his legs crossed, and reads. It's clearly a kids' book, but it's somehow sweet, somehow soft, and it's not more than fifteen pages in that he gets hooked.

The little prince sounds a lot like he himself was when he was a kid. Stubborn, naïve, painfully confused by the rules of the adults' world; when Roxas looks up again, there's a pair of green eyes staring at him from the shore. Axel's lying on his belly looking up at him, his chin in his hands and legs raised, swishing back and forth. "Read, kiddo." he says, and sounds like a child asking for a fairy tale. "Read me a story."

Roxas feels a bit weird, but he shrugs and turns back to page one. "_Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book..._" he begins.

Axel listening to someone reading a book is something extraordinarily adorable. He listens avidly, green eyes wide in a way that tells he's not heard enough fables when he was little, legs swishing in excitement and lips worried between his teeth. He interrupts Roxas every ten lines, asks what words mean, what that particular sentence means, what exactly the Little Prince was trying to say. As Roxas reads and explains, he finds hidden layers of meaning, poetic images that he had overlooked, and that Axel, instead, somehow caught, even without understanding them fully.

Axel seems terribly amused with the Little Prince's obsession for sheep, and holds quite the distaste for his rose, but all in all, he seems to like the story. He can barely read -he's never been diagnosed, but Roxas suspects he's dyslexic, for he's way too smart to be a simple middle school dropout- so Roxas promises he won't continue reading the book without him. Every day after school and work, Roxas finds himself playing Axel's dad and reading the book for him; as days pass -one chapter a day only, and then they chat about random things- Axel's restlessness seems to subside, give out. The book is small, very few pages broken up with illustrations here and there, but it keeps them busy for a month, more or less.

Roxas becomes more thoughtful every day while going through the book. He can understand why the priest asked him to read it: he's the Little Prince, Axel is the Fox; it's just so fitting it's slightly creepy. He knows he needs to tame Axel, give him some peace, because Xion's gone and she can't help anymore; but – there's a but – he's sure the priest wasn't anticipating how that small book would affect Roxas' way of looking at his best friend when he gave it.

Because now it's Roxas who is restless all day, until Axel's shift at work is over and they can head to the river where Axel will lie on his belly in silence, looking up with that terribly endearing, entranced expression of his. Because sometimes, when he jacks off in the shower, Axel's green eyes appear in front of his, Axel takes Naminé's place in his fantasies, and it is wrong, right? Because Axel is a guy, Axel is a gypsy, is an unreliable, arrogant thief, an irresponsible bartender that will never be anything but that.

Even Axel seems to notice how alike they are to the characters in the book. He jokes, teases Roxas, laughs. "Do you think you tamed me, Little Prince?" he snorts, and Roxas can only snicker, his chest stinging slightly at Axel's amused tone.

"I don't think it's possible to tame a Russian fox." Roxas teases back, knowing fully well what Axel's answer will be.

"Ukrainian." he hisses indeed, frowning slightly. Roxas called him 'communist' just once, but the punch he had gotten for that had almost dislocated his jaw, and he never tried again. Asking later, it came out that Axel's parents had sent him and Reno to America right before being deported and killed in some prison for some ridiculous political reason. The C word was prohibited, in Axel's presence. 'Russian' was not. Even if barely.

Roxas doesn't really expect that much of what he's reading to Axel will stick, but he's proven wrong when once, after a hike through the fields, Axel stops in front of a wheat field and quotes the book word for word, making Roxas gape: "'_It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields._' See, Little Prince?" Axel grins, pointing to the waving ears of wheat. And it's beautiful, the contrast between Axel's poppy red hair and the golden of the field, it's breathtaking because Axel is breathtaking himself. He's a living work of art and despite everything, maybe the Little Prince hasn't tamed the fox, maybe this time the fox tamed the Little Prince, and the Little Prince finds himself being completely okay with it. Because it's a beautiful sensation.

"So, you'll be ok with it, if I leave?" he asks unthinkingly.

Axel's eyes widen for a second, just to narrow again a moment later. "No! Vere! Vere you konna ko?" Axel's voice is outraged and has taken on the old accent, the strong Russian accent of the first days. Roxas shrugs.

"Well, in a year or so I'll be going to college, but nowhere _yet_. I was just saying."

Axel's scowling a bit now, and glares away to the ears of wheat again. "The fox vasn't comforted much." he mutters, "Vheat isn't enuf ven the little Pince leaves."

Roxas isn't sure what he should say. His heart is hammering in his throat, because it's wrong and gross and disgusting, but he wants to kiss that scowl away, wants to pull Axel closer and hug him like he did when Xion died, wants to hold him tight and promise, promise he'll never leave, promise he'll never abandon him; promise he'll never have to look at wheat fields and old wells to remember his hair and his laughter. Promise they'd be together forever.

But he remains silent until Axel gives a small grunt and they resume heading home.

It's a year later when Axel rings his doorbell drunk off his own face. He stinks like rum and sweat, and his wife beater is covered in smudges and other disgusting splatters. For a brief second Roxas contemplates the idea of slamming the door in Axel's face, but Axel's wearing his needy stare, his green, desperate, longing stare and Roxas just _can't_. He grabs his friend by the arm and walks him home, sighing. Reno's not there, the house is cold. Axel's been gone for a couple of days, but Roxas didn't even notice. Axel does disappear from time to time, but he always comes back, so Roxas doesn't mind. He tries to get Axel into the tub without being pulled in as well, but when Axel's clean again, lying half passed out on his bed, Roxas is drenched from head to toe, like he tried to wash a human sized cat. He works Axel into a pair of boxers, then has a shower himself. When he's gotten a sweatshirt on himself – one of Axel's, and it's way too big – he checks on his friend and finds him gulping from a bottle that Roxas fears is probably vodka.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" he yells, tearing the bottle away from Axel's mouth. His breath stinks of alcohol to the point Roxas' afraid he'll catch fire if he tries to light a cigarette. "You already stink like you bathed in rum, lay off the fucking vodka!"

"Fuck your bullshit!" Axel yells right back, and he's not even slurring. "I'm Russian, I can drink!"

"You're _Ukrainian _and your liver has an American passport so piss off." Roxas hisses, tossing the vodka bottle into the sink.

Axel bares his teeth, but then his expression changes into a desperate frown. "Well it doesn't matter, because I'm leaving. I'm moving away in a week." he half whines. Roxas' chest hurts badly at those words, and he hasn't recovered from the blow yet when Axel continues. "Reno found a job in a big city as a bodyguard, chopper pilot, I don't know, something of the like. There's even a job for me. Reno wants me to go with him. It pays well and it's in the big city." He speaks like he's repeating a speech he's heard from someone else, like he's repeated it to himself a thousand times; like he's trying to convince himself, first. "In the big city maybe people won't look at us funny all the time."

"Maybe, if you didn't steal everything you can get your hands on, people wouldn't look at you funny." Roxas offers venomously. _No no Axel no!_

"Easy saying that, when mommy pays for all your stuff." Axel hisses back. Seriously, they have argued about this same thing a hundred times and Roxas is tired of it.

"You're just a thief and a lazy bum." he huffs, "That's why you never blended in."

"Like all my people, right?" Axel snarls, "because I'm a gypsy, that's just what we are, right?"

"Axel, for god's sake, _stop _playing the victim, I'm tired of always repeating myself." Roxas huffs, and he's perfectly aware of the fact that he's yelling back so loud just because _No no no Axel no no don't leave don't go away stay here stay with me_. "If you wanna go, go; nobody's holding you back, go and accept your fancy job in the big city, we're not gonna cry for your absence."

Axel begins yelling something, but it's an incomprehensible mess of rasping consonants, low vowels drowned after long r's, s', k's; it sounds mysteriously menacing, like Axel being angry in Ukrainian is somehow another person, a person he doesn't know, doesn't trust. He screams and screams and screams, and each scream stinks like an empty bottle of liquor; seriously, Axel's so drunk he probably thinks he's yelling at three different Roxases, all deaf. An avalanche of foreign insults rolls over him and all Roxas can do is stand there and wait for Axel to calm down, or at least stop yelling long enough to get a decent gasp of air. But Axel seems to work perfectly in apnea, because that stream of Cyrillic hate seems endless, until at a certain point Axel yells out something Roxas can finally understand.

"You were supposed to tame me!"

"What? Axel, it's just a fucking book!" he yells back, and Axel frowns, shoves him away, shakes his head like Roxas didn't understand a thing, like he's ruined everything.

"It's not." Axel mutters, but he seems different now: mortified, more than angry. He mutters something else in Russian and shakes his head again, then looks up. "Why aren't you asking me to stay?"

Roxas is caught off guard there, shrugs awkwardly. "Uh, because Reno's your family." he mutters lamely, "And if it pays well it could be a good chance, I guess."

"But aren't you sorry that I'm leaving?"

"Axel, you're not my property."

"Fuck your politeness." Axel hisses, "Aren't you fucking sorry?"

"There's still the phone, and mail." Roxas offers, shrugging. He's missing the point, totally missing Axel's point, and it's a disaster, it's a terrible disaster because he isn't looking at Axel and he's completely missed the flash of disappointment on Axel's features at his words. He doesn't know Axel's thinking it was stupid of him to think Roxas would miss him like he'd miss Roxas, so he doesn't understand why Axel sits down desolately on the bed and takes his head in his hands, face hidden behind long, nervous fingers. So he misunderstands, rushes to the sink, grabs a basin and shoves it under Axel's face. "Ax for the love of god puke over here, if you puke on the carpet this place will stink of vomit for centuries." he flails.

But Axel doesn't need to puke, and stares at him with wide, shiny green eyes, right before he shoves the basin away and tugs Roxas in. When lips meet it's messy, it's angry, a clashing of teeth and tongue. There's nothing sweet in the kiss, and Roxas' head spins because god this is wrong, so so so wrong, mom would fucking die, everybody would look at him with disgust because _a fag_, god, a fag. He's not, he's not a fucking faggot, he's not, but Axel's hands are under his shirt, stroking his skin, palming his side, his hips, pulling, pushing, tugging; until it's cold, goddamnit, way too cold, and Roxas finds himself undressed underneath Axel on his bed. It's feverish and wrong and strange, and he's not really sure how it's supposed to work, but Axel's hands seem to know the right path by themselves. There's a slick feeling down his stomach, and when and a tongue dips inside his belly button Roxas squirms, but it's half hearted. Because he doesn't care what mom or the rest of the world will think, as long as – _god _how it hurts when Axel slides inside.

It doesn't last long, doesn't feel good like Roxas imagined, but it's still overwhelming, it's still draining and strangely fulfilling. Axel's face and moans are breathtaking, just like the strangely slick feeling of him pushing and pulling in and out slowly, driving deep inside, cutting Roxas' breath each time. It's both disgusting and arousing when he feels Axel come inside, wet, warm, _dirty_. When Axel slides out of him, on the verge of passing out, Roxas isn't sure about how he feels. He looks up at a dirty ceiling, swallows, then shakes his head. He slides away, scurries his way to the bathroom, has a quick shower and runs away. No, no he can't. He can't. This can't have happened, not to him. Not with Axel.

He falls to his knees, crawls, leans his back against the tree and watches the dark water of the river run away. Pitch black like ink, like the sky, and there's just too much moonlight, too much of that silverish, glowing blue light, and he can still see where he's sought shelter. The big oak tree, where he first saw Axel, where they read the Little Prince together, where he realized he had fallen in love with his best friend. And no, god, no, mom will fucking die over this, will freak the fuck out, because it's _Axel_, a man, a tall, lanky gypsy, a thief, a lazy bum, a guy who's only been able to hold a job because Tifa is tough enough to keep him in line. Roxas will be someone, will probably become a lawyer or a doctor. As soon as he's saved enough money for his studies, Roxas will leave, will attend some good university, and Axel's no match for him, no match for his potential, for his future.

It's dawning now, and as the sun peeks up from behind the woods and illuminates the faraway fields of wheat glowing in gold and red, Roxas realizes that he doesn't care, doesn't give a shit. Because maybe mom was right, gypsies do steal babies; because it's true. A gypsy stole him with a simple, longing stare from the other side of the river over fifteen years ago. He never stood a chance. The Little Prince had been tamed by the fox, but this time the fox won't cry because the little prince won't leave.

And Roxas doesn't move; he knows Axel will find him.

When he hears tottering steps on the rocks behind him, he smiles softly. Yeah. Never stood a chance. "So, Axel. Has it done some good at all for you?"

There's silence behind him, and a moment later Axel's knelt behind him, reaching out to embrace him and hold him tight, arms crossed over Roxas' chest, face hidden in the curve of his shoulder.

"It has done me good," he's whispering breathlessly, kissing feverishly along Roxas' neck, "because of the color of the wheat fields."

* * *

><p>"<em>The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.<br>'Please– tame me!' he said."_

(Le Petit Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery)


End file.
